The Awakening

In present-day Philadelphia, riding the bus home from her job teaching middle schoolers, Breen O’Kelly sees a man with silver hair and feels the strange call to come home. She stops to check on the house of her mother, Jennifer Wilcox, a media director for a major advertising firm. Her mother is successful and well-manicured while 26-year-old Breen feels frazzled, anxious, and unhappy. Her best memories are of when she was young, before her father left.

In her mother’s office, a sudden breeze swirls papers from a desk drawer. Breen discovers an investment account in her name that holds nearly $4 million—money sent to her by her father, which her mother never told her about and has kept from Breen all this time.

Breen goes to Sally’s, a drag club, and tells her best friend Marco about her inheritance. They return to their shared apartment. Breen decides to quit her job and use the money to pay off her student loans, then fly to Ireland to look for her father. Marco agrees to go with her. He encourages Breen to overhaul her drab appearance and wardrobe.

Breen confronts her mother, who has always made her feel inadequate. On the way home, she glimpses the silver-haired man again. She tells Marco her mother’s reaction was “upset and worried I’d just sealed my doom or something” (49). She shows him her new tattoo on the inside of her wrist: The Irish word misneach (pronounced “misnaw”), which means courage. Sally of the club Sally’s calls and asks them both to work at the club the night before their departure.

Breen naps and dreams of walking through a green forest with a waterfall and a tiny dragon. She sees a black tower and hears sounds of war. She imagines she is underwater and hears a voice saying: “You are the key. Turn it. Awaken” (60). Marco wakes her and they go to the club to find that Sally, who is nurturing and kind to Breen, has thrown them a going-away party.

The next day, Marco and Breen take a limo to the airport to fly first class. Breen reflects on the cottage she found to rent for the summer and how, when Marco returns, she will be on her own for the first time. Marco suggests that Breen start a blog about her travels. The silver-haired man watches them go.

On the flight, Breen dreams of the green land and a man on a black horse who tells her to “Awake, and be” (73). Breen starts a blog called “Finding Me.” She and Marco drive their rental car to the castle where they are staying a few days. Breen writes down a dream she has of the green land and a woman visiting a graveyard who tells Breen, again, to awaken. Breen talks a morning walk through the gardens, touches her hand to a clump of flowers, and feels a hum. As she walks away, new flowers grow where she had touched.

Breen and Marco spend the day sightseeing and are delighted by the beautiful views. They eat in a pub in Doolin and Breen remembers her father traveled and played music. The pub owner recalls Eian Kelly, Breen’s father, and his band, Sorcery. He tells Breen her father met her mother at the pub. He’s sad to hear they divorced when Breen was 10, and they wonder where Eian is now. The pub owner gives Breen a picture of her father with his band, and that night she dreams of Eian, who loved her deeply.

In the morning, Breen writes for her blog, which is becoming popular. On her walk, she meets a woman named Morena who lets Breen fly her hawk. Breen is thrilled. Morena says she’ll see Breen at the homeplace, then disappears. Breen and Marco visit a castle and its folk park; while Breen is enchanted by the pastoral way of life, Marco says he’d rather have the Internet, LGBTQ rights, and penicillin (109). Breen sees the silver-haired man again. When she asks about Morena, no one at the castle knows of her. Breen dreams of herself as a child trapped underwater in a glass cage. When she screams, the glass shatters.

Marco gets a tattoo of an Irish harp before they drive to Fey Cottage, the place Breen rented for the summer. A woman named Finola McGill shows them around, and Breen is enchanted by the small, inviting cottage and its picturesque setting. She thinks “if she could have any house in the world with any view in the world, it would be just this” (131). 

Breen writes in her blog of feeling at home in the cottage. She and Marco enjoy quiet days of exploring the area. After she takes Marco to the airport for his flight, Breen works with the gardener, Seamus, to learn about the plants. She doesn’t know she’s being guarded at night because she is Eian Kelly’s daughter.

Breen establishes a daily ritual of writing, walking, and learning to cook. When she visits the village, she buys an Irish harp as a gift for Marco. It reminds her of how her father tried to teach her to play. She plants flowers with Seamus. She dreams of a storm and of being threatened by something dark that “would take all she was, and drink it like wine” (154). On a walk one morning, Breen meets a friendly dog and follows him into the woods to an enormous tree ringed with gray stones. The dog climbs into the tree and when Breen follows him, she feels “the world drop away” (159).